Every year for National Day Holiday (October 1st) the folks at Weinan Aston English all go on a trip together. Last year I was in England at the time, but this year I was in China, so I decided to go along. We were heading to ChongQing (重庆) for a few days taking an overnight train, and there was around 20 of us in total. As usual, lots of pics, so go make a brew and come back for a gander…
The adventure started with a mini-bus ride into Xi’an to grab the overnight train. Annoying bus song of choice: “99 Green Bottles Hanging on the Wall.”

Then on the train, it was time to get settled in. The atmosphere on the train was great. Trains are the way to get around China. Usually overnight trains are offered in two flavours. Soft sleepers or hard sleepers. Soft sleepers have cosier beds, and have 4 beds in each ‘room.’ However, we were in the hard sleepers, and the beds are still pretty cosy, but its 6 beds per ‘compartment’ and the compartments don’t have doors. In fact, any security worries aside, this was a big plus. What with our 20-strong group, it meant we could all easily socialise as a group, I’d sit on one bed for an hour talking to the people there, before going to see what was happening in the next ‘compartment.’

Being foreign and nerds, we obviously rolled deep equipped with laptops.

One awesome side effect of the trip too; I got to try about 100 different kinds of Chinese snacks. People travel by train with enough snacks to feed them and all of their friends. This resulted in a lot of snacks being handed out. Delicious. This was especially useful as us, the lazy foreigners, had filled our bags with electronics, with no room for consumables. Well, actually I found out the spare camera-lens compartments in my bag made excellent beer-can holders. Kept them chilled too. 😉

Earlier, on the mini-bus, Michael started a war. A camera-flash war. He started blinding people with his compact point-and-shoot camera’s flash. In the words of B A Baracus “I pity the fool!” I pulled out my dedicated Sigma-DG 530 flash unit (around 20x the power of a compact camera’s flash) and returned fire. After 10 minutes of having a bright multi-coloured rectangle floating around everywhere he looked, he waved the white flag. Another side effect was that he gained a phobia of my camera. As seen above.

Seriously. It’s the 21st century. An age of Blu-ray, 3DTV, Fibre Optic broadband and other technological wonders and we still haven’t sold the issue of earphone wires getting tangled.

and this is my trophy from the ‘war’. Such a well-timed shot

Our man-grotto as seen from above.

Our self-provided on-train entertainment.

Looking down the train.

Thanks to our previously mentioned lack of foresight, here we are in the dining-car eating over-priced, under-cooked food.

The next morning, waking up on the train was an interesting experience. Watching everyone doing their morning routine was quite interesting.

Getting off the train and onto another minibus, our first encounter with a ChongQing resident and it was the police. Oh ho.

Our mini-bus had decided to break down in the middle of the busy road. Oops.

These things were everywhere in ChongQing. They’re actually motorbikes! Inside they don’t have a steering wheel, but handlebars. It was the craziest thing I’ve seen.

The first stop of our trip; a touristy souvenir shop. Seemed kinda backwards to me, I like to do these things last, not first. I just did my usual thing of taking photos of everything in sight. Until someone in a shop told me I wasn’t allowed to take photos. Then I got bored.

Pretty!

Butterflies.

Me and John were curious as to what exactly a ‘cluster of mutton’ was.

Lots of snacks.

Some lanterns.

Seemed a bit silly to go to ChongQing to get Indian Roti… but, it also seemed DELICIOUS, so… I guess I’m silly!

At some point, me and John got separated from Michael. While on our travels, me and John decided to buy Cowboy hats. The other Chinese people asked “Do all foreigners like to wear cowboy hats?” We said “No, we just thought it would be funny.” Then, right on cue, Michael comes around the corner wearing a cowboy hat. Ahh, the Chinese understand us better than we understand ourselves.

Some of the food.

Some of the cowboys.

Whenever I go to bigger cities I live in hope of doing a little carspotting. No exotics, but this Merc looked a little out of place.

The randomness of our trip continued with a trip to a… hot pot factory?! Ayyayayaay.
Chongqing is famous for it’s hot pot. But, going around a hot pot food goods factory was a bit random!

Here you can see John brimming with enthusiasm from his every pore.

Next was a trip to the Zha Zi Dong and Bai Gong Guan prisons. These were prisons that held (and killed) a lot of political prisoners during the Chinese civil war. I don’t mean to come across as ignorant, but again, there really wasn’t much to do – so I just took more photos.

Michael in one of the cells, and some of the torture implements.

On the minibus to our next destination, I saw this beauty. ‘Made in Kitchen.’ Hmmm, eh?!

And what was our next stop? The ChongQing city square.

I made this cool ‘planet’ photo of the city square.

and here’s a group photo of us all in the square. Fun fact: I took this photo. Fun fact 2: I’m in this photo. Fun fact 3: Photoshop is king.

Following this we were dropped off at out hotel. Which, was different to everyone elses’ hotel. Turns out the original hotel wasn’t licensed to house foreigners, so we got put up it a different hotel, that was quite far from the other hotel. While our hotel was apparently a nicer and more expensive hotel, the location was not. As they say ‘Location, location, location’ and as I said; ‘Ghetto, ghetto, ghetto.’ We were gonna grab a taxi to go meet up with the others for dinner, but – couldn’t find a taxi for love nor money (they probably feared having their wheels stolen as they drove through.) Anyway, after 30 failed minutes of trying to find a cab, we set out in search of a decent looking restaurant. What a search it was. Down alleys, up alleys, around alleys, behind alleys. Various discussions and speculations took place about the following day’s newspaper headlines. “Foreigners walk into drug deal gone wrong”, “Foreigners found dead, naked, abused” were some of the most likely. However, we eventually found ourselves on the embankment of the Yangtze river, along with all the docked / moored cruise boats that go up and down the river.

After a few limbo competitions under the giant steel cables that hold the ships, and after I had bored the other guys to death with “just one more photo.” we realised we still hadn’t eaten. Then we saw it…

A hostel association logo! We headed inside in the hope of English speaking and maybe even directions to a restaurant.

What we found was a cool little hostel with great English speakers and… Pizza! John was happy, so we decided to eat at the hostel. We also met some other foreigners in the hostel, who turned out to be Aston teachers from Xianyang… one of the cities next to Weinan! Small world.

Of course, after eating and talking for a few hours, I still wanted to take more photos.

We headed back to the hotel while trying to avoid all of the various nasty looking types we’d seen earlier in the day and rested up for our next day.

Part 2 coming soon!

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I had just finished reading a book called River Town that Vicky has lent me, when this email arrived. The book is about an American’s two year say at Fuling, just down river from ChongQing and the author had just left Fuling and caught the boat to ChongQing.
I had just been thinking, what a shame there were no photos in the book when lo and behold – ChongQing Holiday – Day 1 arrived – what an amazing coincidence.
Incidentally, the book “River Town – Two Years on The Yantze”, by Peter Hessler is well worth a read!